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A lot of people (especially online) have a big misunderstanding of what "fair use" is.The misconception is that there's a set of rights that we have to use copyrighted material, and when the copyright holder doesn't respect those rights he's just being a jerk.Actually, "fair use" is just a defense you can use when sued for copyright infringement.And it's almost entirely up to the discretion of the court to decide whether or not you'll get off with that defense.There's no actual set of rules, and that's the way the law is written.

media outlets could certainly make an argument that such automated "take downs" constitute an unfair burden and so are invalid.

And the legal theory on this could develop from Lenz v. Universal: a copyright owner's representative must consider fair use and other defenses in good faith before filing a notice of claimed infringement under OCILLA.

Actually, "fair use" is just a defense you can use when sued for copyright infringement.

In Canada, the equivalent concept is not a defense for infringement, the equivalent concept creates an exemption to infringement in the first place. So, if your usage was fair, as determined by law, then your defense if you should happen to get sued for infringement would simply be that you didn't infringe on copyright in the first place.

Fair use is, by statute declaration, not copyright infringement at all. Copyright holders have no authority at all to forbid any fair use.

PP might as well have said a lot of people have a big misunderstanding of what "innocence" is, that "innocence" is just a defense you can use.

The criteria for fair use are laid out in statute law and have decades of case law to back them. Courts have the same discretion in finding the boundaries of fair use as they have in finding the boundaries of any other law, and the same responsibility. There's nothing at all remarkable about that discretion, it's why they're called "Judge".